In ice hockey there are typically two main positions: goalie and player. The player carries the hockey puck throughout the ice surface, which requires a skate that allows for acceleration, top end speed, tight turning, and fast stopping. The goalie, on the other hand, protects their net from hockey pucks passing the goal line, and therefore does not venture far from the net. A goalie requires a skate that allows very quick side to side movement, and mobility while down on the ice, in the butterfly position.
Traditional goalie skates have a thermoformed plastic boot riveted to a plastic cowling which houses the steel skate blade. The deficiency with this design is threefold:
i) The thermoformed plastic boot does not provide an adequately rigid coupling to the skate blade through the riveted plastic cowling. Therefore, as the goalie attempts to make quick movements from one side of their goalie crease to the other energy, and the resulting movement velocity, is lost through flexing and bending of the traditional goalie skate.
ii) The plastic cowling that is traditionally used covers and encloses the bottom half of the thermoformed plastic boot. Therefore, the cowling creates a larger outer dimension of the skate, which inhibits the goalie's movement when down in the butterfly position because the goalie must create a higher angle between their leg and the ice before the blade can engage the ice and allow the goalie the ability to push.
iii) Because the plastic cowling encloses the bottom half of the boot there is not the ability for the boot position, relative to the plastic cowling and blade, to be modified and optimized.
Various goalie skates are described in the following prior US patent documents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,109,536; D641,060; 7,793,947; D542,520; D526,474; 2014/0097583; and 2005/0134010; however, in each instance the protective cowling is formed separately from the skate boot body and subsequently attached to the skate boot body so as to inhibit the goalie's movement in the same manner described above.